Brain Flab

This morning a fellow A2Ker sent me an article regarding a video game that allows one to be a guitar hero in no time flat.

Okay.... you don't really learn how to play the guitar but you feel like you're really playing the guitar. The article questioned whether kids might still put in the hard work to really learn how to play a guitar.

This idea was fresh in my head as my family set out for an inagural ride on the new aerial tram. Everyone there had a camera.

I started thinking about the olden days when I was in photography school and just starting out in photography. Not only did you have to choose the right lens and settings you had to choose the right film, the right chemicals - that you had to mix right and store right and keep at the right temperature. I carried a gray card and a light meter and I bracketed my exposures. I threw away 90% of what I shot.

Now I love digital photography with it's click and fix methodology. Sure, you still make a lot of decisions but not nearly as many as before. Digital photography is forgiving in a way that film photography could never be.

And I like that ease. But I do realize that a certain part of my thinking process has grown flabby. It's a muscle that I don't use much anymore. The lack of exercise has led to flab in related areas and I sometimes find myself in snapshot mode, not really thinking about what I'm trying to do, or say, or see because I know how easy it will be to fix.

Fixing is a skill in it's own right - but a different skill - one that I still have a hard time giving myself over to because I see that I didn't do it right the first time.

But that's just me.

Has any part of your brain grown flabby over the years?